Author of COWBOY & WILLS: A Love Story
The day Wills was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, I took him for a ride to Ben’s Fish Store in Sherman Oaks to buy a large fresh water aquarium. We picked up all the equipment; a ten gallon tank, a filter, multi-colored rocks to spread on the bottom, an imitation pirate ship made out of clay, tacky neon plastic plants, a large rock with a hole in the middle for the fish to swim through, fish food, a small green plastic net, a special siphon with a clear hose on the end to clean the tank and replacement filters. It totaled $462.84—a high price that I could barely afford to squeeze onto my overextended VISA. I didn't care; my 3-year-old had autism.
Wills was elated, I could tell. His eyes were flashing that clear blue twinkle I only saw when he was really happy. Sometimes his eyes were more like mirrors, my image bouncing back at me. Those were the times I was most panicked, watching Wills recede so deep inside himself that I saw no way to grab hold of his tiny hand and pull him back to me.
But when Wills was present, the world tilted toward perfection. It wasn’t that the diagnosis was a shock, we’d dreaded hearing it ever since we first took Wills to see Katherine, a therapist, a year-and-a-half before. He was a clingy, anxious baby who hadn’t hit a single developmental mark. But still, the diagnosis hit with the velocity of a cannonball.
My husband, Michael, and I focused on how smart he was—how advanced. Who’d ever heard of a toddler sitting still for a history lesson in aviation? He had an incredible facility for building things, creating forts, train stations and airports out of stacks of videotape cassettes and blocks.
But when Wills was 3, it was getting harder to ignore his idiosyncrasies. He was extremely sensitive to textures and noises, a flannel shirt gave him “the goose bumps” and bubbles in the bathtub actually “hurt” his skin. If we strolled by someone in the park and they bent down and said, “What a gorgeous little boy,” his thrashing legs and ear-piercing screams sent his admirer bolting in the opposite direction.
As Wills slowly navigated the preschool minefield of noises and messes and crowded hallways, my animal fixation persisted. With every new problem Wills encountered, I bought him a new pet. We now had six hermit crabs and two hamsters. I cruised Petcos the way drunks frequent bars.
In December of Wills’s kindergarten year, we finally went to the pet store to pick up a new golden retriever puppy, whom Wills had already named Cowboy Carol Lawrence.
“Is that your dog?” a woman with perfect blonde highlights and a Birkin bag asked Wills. I instinctively stepped forward to rescue him from the awkwardness of talking to a stranger, but I didn’t need to.
“Yes,” he told her, turning so she could see Cowboy’s face. “She’s a cutie.” “She sure is,” the woman said. Then something happened. It was so small that nobody in the store would have noticed it. But to me, it was extraordinary. This woman, a complete stranger, patted Wills’s shoulder—and he didn’t bristle or bolt out of the front door in an absolute panic. He just stood there, staring at us with a shy, “what do you know?” smile. Somehow, with this tiny heart beating next to his, Wills had stepped a little further into the world.
Cowboy’s arrival signaled the beginning of many firsts for Wills, but none was more significant than allowing other children into his life—opening him up to the possibility of having really close friends.
The transformation began with kids calling to ask Wills if they could come over to play with Cowboy. Knowing they wanted to play with Cowboy made him feel safer, because it was once removed from them wanting to play with him.
When Wills was anxious or sad about something, he confided in Cowboy. Sometimes I’d hear him in his room or the backyard telling Cowboy all of his troubles. There were too many positives to count: Wills, who could barely say hello to a stranger, proudly leading her around the school so the kids could pet her; Wills’s first swim in the pool because Cowboy was swimming; him sleeping in his own bed with Cowboy spooning him; Cowboy sitting outside the restaurant so that Wills could sit inside, tolerating the noise and the people; the red-and-white doggie pajamas we’d ordered her from a catalog that matched Wills’s pajamas exactly.
When Cowboy was 2 years old, she became very ill and developed a terrible rash. Dr. Graham, the vet, called me while I was making French toast for Wills. He’d finally gotten enough information from all the tests he’d been doing on Cowboy to confirm a diagnosis.
“I can definitely tell you that Cowboy has Lupus,” he said.
“Is there a cure for this?”
“No, I’m sorry, Monica,” he said.
The loss would be unthinkable—that Wills would lose his right arm, his silly sister, his trampoline buddy, the one who’d given him the confidence to be seen and heard.
As Wills got braver, Cowboy got weaker. He responded by thinking of ways to make her life easier. Empathy had arrived. Wills built a wooden ramp to help her walk up to the couch or get to his bed. He also cut up old t-shirts to make her a pillow, which he sewed together with large, loopy stitches and stuffed with paper towels.
September came, and Wills started third grade without a fulltime aide. We decided we couldn’t let Cowboy suffer any longer. “We’re going to have to let Cowboy go very soon,” I told him, tucking his hair behind his ears. He hugged her so tightly, that her face was all bunched up.
“Cowboy’s third birthday is almost here,” he cried. He was right, she wouldn’t make it to 3. “What about her birthday cake from Bones Bakery?” He was hiccupping and crying at the same time.
“It feels horrible, unthinkable, that Cowboy will die,” I said. And then using Katherine’s words, I told him, “It might even feel like you can’t live through it, but you will.” He wailed even louder. I was inadequate. There was nothing I could do to help my son. Nothing I could say to make this any easier. I had run out of words.
My impulse, of course, was to run out and get a new dog right away, but Katherine said that Wills needed time to grieve. So we compromised—two months, at least, before I’d go anywhere near a breeder website or a dog adoption shelter.
Wills was right; there would never be another Cowboy. She was his first love and his first love lost. Heaven knows, she left an indelible mark on all of us. But with that unimaginable loss, came an incalculable lesson: we all have to learn to say goodbye. It doesn’t mean we don’t miss her or that she could ever be replaced—of course, she never could. It means that his new puppy will be the next generation—not the original, but unique just the same—to teach Wills that nothing, not even cancer, can destroy love.
Cowboy & Wills opens the day after Holloway’s adorable three year-old son Wills is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Monica Holloway is the critically acclaimed author of Driving With Dead People, a book that Newsweek called “unforgettable,” Glamour christened “a classic,” and the Washington Post deemed “irresistible.”
www.monicaholloway.com
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